Sunday, March 13, 2011

As you all know, Randy is particularly fond of correcting errors in his comics without so much as a comment noting his previous error. This extends to adding a "Zing!" to the end of alt texts which are widely seen as being unnecessarily elitist, though not, apparently, to adding Hey Jude to his shitty chart comics about Hey Jude.

I've always roundly mocked Randy for this tendency before, because it's funny, and other webcomics people who occasionally upload errors usually acknowledge them somewhere, even if it's just on their Twitter streams. But I've never felt that it was really that significant before. It's just a minor, stupid thing.

Then came today's comic.

The image above is a copy of the original comic. Reproduced below is the corrected version.

What the fuck, Randy? I mean, I know you don't bother proofreading, but do you not even fucking look at your comics before uploading them? Just a fleeting glance should have told you something was hideously wrong here. But you don't even have time to do that?

But notice that the blocking of the text is different. It almost looks like this was a deliberate stylistic decision--it's hard to imagine how he could make an error of something so colossally stupid. See how the "Dammit" moves, for instance. Was this deliberate?

Not much to say about the comic itself. No doubt in response to assertions that Megan of the Bountiful Milk is always used as an insert to be the voice of truth and perfection, here she is doing something which is moderately unreasonable, but in a way that is delightfully quirky (and, no doubt, utterly arousing to one such as Randy, Math Enthusiast).

This comic might have had merit if the joke weren't merely Randy taking random words from fairy tales and replacing them with random terms from mathematics, and then providing a narrative for why this is happening. Wasn't there a time when there was intelligence to your jokes, Randy? Not just LOLRANDOM juxtapositions that have no reason to be juxtaposed?

Posted by
Rob

173 comments:

Exposition. He has an idea for a comic, perhaps a *good* idea this time, and the means to convey it is fucking exposition. There is, quite literally, no lazier way of explaining something. Seriously Randall, you are a poor excuse for a human being.

"This comic might have had merit if the joke weren't merely Randy taking random words from fairy tales and replacing them with random terms from mathematics, and then providing a narrative for why this is happening."

Oho, so you mean a joke with some actual structure to it?

The main problem with this comic is it doesn't provide anything witty. Math terms + Fairy Tales =/= a joke.

What needs to happen is something... well, funny? I enjoyed http://xkcd.com/821/ "119 little pigs," because the notion of the little pigs building their houses out of base elements was funny! That comic could use the imagination for it's portrayal. (Not as effective as blown-out cartoon visuals)

Here, what the hell? No imagery to speak of, we're left with WORDS WORDS NUMBERS AND MORE WORDS. He wouldn't, and I doubt could, show us (n-1) dwarves, or any of his other images.

Do you think Randall drinks fine Scotch, or is he more of a cheap vodka sort of guy? I personally think he's the type of person who can't handle his liquor at all and passes out at the mere scent of freshly baked bread.

@TheMesosadeThe only real purpose is if you were, I guess, deriving something and it came down to just an "x"

that's the only way i can see it coming up, but then again it would only come up on a calculus midterm, not in the "work of a mathematics professor"...

"I guess the א_ω little piggies did get a bit weird towards the end..." would have been a funnier line because א_ω does get weird towards the end in some sense (it is a singular cardinal, which is unusual).

as always, if you're going to use a word outside its context, it's only funny if it finds new, unexpected meaning. LOLRANDOM is... retarded.

Randall relies so heavily in just dropping mathematical references to amuse his fanbase that he forgets to have them make any sense.

"Inductive White and the (n-1) dwarves": proving that the proposition is true for n-1 is the middle step of induction. It should be called "Inductive White and the n dwarves", or "Inductive White and the dwarf", since that's where it starts(usually; could be no dwarf, maybe). It makes little to no sense as the story would have to be retold to prove that... I don't even want to continue this. It makes no sense.

"lim x Little Pigs": that obviously tends to inifnity. This means the story just gets bigger and bigger and never reaches an end towards which it can get weird.

Finally: "I'm still not sure which versions are real". Um... Megan? Are you actually retarded?

I think Rob's decision to focus on the first panel blunder was wise, since otherwise this is another "LOL RANDOM MATH" comic. Ironically, it reads like Hollywood science, only dropping names with no meaning. You know, the kind of thing Randall supposedly HATES.

I think it's because Rob's turned into a trigonometric function (specifically a cosine) which doens't allow him to climb up Rapunzel's hair. Which would also explain why his reviews are so up and down.

Algebra, trig, all three calculus classes (calculi?), differential equations, probability and statistics, discrete, and linear algebra all had female teachers for me. But to be fair, half of them looked like men.

I can surely count at least 3 female Math professors during my Comp Sci graduation(the system down here doesn't work in "major" and "minor", so that's all I can say), and 5 male. I think it's a reasonable ratio.

I don't see how Randall including a female Math teacher is white-knighting. Seriously, people, tone down.

true fact: i read through the beginning of this post, couldn't tell what had been changed, and figured Rob was making some comedy out of exaggerating his anger at some incredibly minor change between the original and fixed versions of the comic. I switched back and forth between the two versions about a dozen times without noticing anything different.

Seven a.m., waking up in the morningGotta be fresh, gotta go downstairsGotta have my bowl, gotta have cerealSeein’ everything, the time is goin’Tickin’ on and on, everybody’s rushin’Gotta get down to the bus stopGotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)

@ Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)- What the hell was that? I guess she's so bored that she has to monotonously repeat "fun fun fun fun" to herself in an effort to get the idea to penetrate her subconscious. Can't blame her either. If I spent my weekends like that I'd be looking forward to Mondays.

Still, looks like she's just a kid so it's all good. She'll learn to enjoy herself when she grows up.

I haven't been made so uncomfortable by an FPS since I played "No Russian" and the entirety of Homefront back to back.

Actually, honestly, considering Modern Warfare 2 and Homefront, it seems like Randall might have been better off making a crack at how bathetic modern FPSes end up being. He could have done the whole "everyone you kill has a bio snippet you listen to" as an exaggerated parody of the attempted pathos devs sprinkle into their games. Instead, he seems to be making a joke that relies on people and developers trending toward less pathos and melodrama in shooters. Which, despite games like Bulletstorm, Duke Nukem Forever, and Serious Sam 3, doesn't really seem to be the case.

That... I think that mod idea is actually kind of good. It isn't a funny idea at all, but it sounds like it would be a fun addition that would simply start to wear a bit thin once the backstories start repeating themselves.

I have no idea why anybody would freak out about it. It's such a stupid thought that it's amazing anybody would try to hinge a joke on such a presupposition, even hyperbolically. Fiction doesn't stop being fiction just because it is supplemented with words.

Randall's bane: execution. He ALWAYS chooses the worst execution possible for his jokes. Yes, this idea is old and used a lot, but heck, it could be done well.

Then Randall decides to show us a stick figure playing a game instead of showing us THE GODDAMN GAME. That's like broadcasting a major sports event and all the time all you see is the audience cheering or mourning or fighting as the game goes on.

Also, his head is split open. Really, Randall? I could stick my arm into his brain there. This is ridiculous.

Dude Kitten, stop spamming your fucking shitblog here. No one gives two shits besides you and maybe two other people and certainly no one gives two shits about your reviewing capabilities since the only reason people congregate here is because of common hatred stemming from the comments you fuck.

It hasn't really been done in multiplayer FPS games, except perhaps for the class backgrounds in Team Fortress 2, and I took it for granted that he meant multiplayer. Maybe he didn't, but if he did then I guess Halo is the only FPS he has ever played because overhearing snippets of conversation has been a staple feature in FPS games with human opponents for a very long time.

I'm not sure it is multiplayer. At least in single player there are characters you're taking out - who would be moved by this in multiplayer when you are just shooting an obvious avatar of a (not dying) person who will indeed be back two minutes after you shoot him?

"No, I didn't just kill someone with three kids waiting for him back home, I just killed XxBummyBoy604xX."

Personally I think the first two bios in the comic are retarded and don't really make you feel sympathetic for the person or whatever that the player killed. Like super retarded. Could have made some better bios to get the point across.

5:20, are you telling me you aren't TOTALLY DEVASTATED by killing a one-time treehouse builder? I mean, he once built a friggin' treehouse!

And that woman had so many unread e-mails. I'm sure each one was incredibly important and worth her time. Not sure why she'd let so many important e-mails stack up like that without checking them though. She was kind of flighty...

At one extreme, he was actually in or possibly graduated from college when Eternal September started, making him roughly 40, which makes the fact that he's trying to establish some kind of camaraderie with angsty highschoolers really sad and kind of creepy. At the other extreme, he actually is an angsty highschooler, meaning he can't remember when Eternal September started and is either grossly exaggerating or outright lying about his experience to establish camaraderie with aging nerds. Every point in between has both, to differing degrees.

I have finally found it: the holy grail of shit math webcomics. Worse than xkcd, worse than even abstruse goose. It is Spiked Math. Check these out... if you dare:http://spikedmath.com/389.html (this one is probably worse than any xkcd that isn't about bracketshttp://spikedmath.com/394.htmlhttp://spikedmath.com/395.html (TWO KRAMER COMICS)(IN A ROW)http://spikedmath.com/397.html (penis. haha, penis)http://spikedmath.com/399.html

The alt-text for the new comic interests me. Given the enthusiasm he puts into his work, it's apparent that Randall is not excited at all about doing the thing he is successful at. Yet I don't think he was ever excited about or expectant of being successful at it- it seems like he was just lazily dropping rubbish on the web for the hell of it and somehow picked up a following by some sinister quirk of faith.

he has obviously read the blurb of something like the seven habits of effective people on wiki, decided it was dumb because he doesn't know what the guy does outside of that book, and already the xkcd fans i see in real life are talking about how dumb it is to keep a set schedule.

i really wish he was being self-aware with this but again he shows himself to be a pathetic shell of a man

"MAYBE IF I LIE TO HER THEN SHE WILL SEX ME HURR HURR HURR I DO NOT UNDERSTAND PAINTINGS ONLY MATHS"

I mean fucking hell it's strawmen and bitter bullied jerk all over it whjat the hell FUCK YOU ALL.

New XKCD isn't as flaming piss bad as it could have been but is still bad.

Randall, somone who draws and updates about five minutes before schedule failing even to fucking look at his comics before he uploads them doesn't really have a leg to stand on w/ regards to productivity.

and considering his preachy word-salad lecturey bullshit (I arm myself with the arrows of science against the rocks of ILLNESS) he doesn't really have much truck to be calling others out for their preachy bullshit either.

It's funny because if Randall really had a schedule and was excited about the thing he's successful at(successful, not good) he'd have enough buffer for an entire year of webcomics. If he died, we'd never know.

Thymine: I love you AAdenine: I love you too TThymine: We were meant for each other (AUTHOR: GET IT CAUSE THEY'RE COMPLEMENTARY BASES)CAPTION: Unfortunately their relationship was only held together by weak hydrogen bonds (AUTHOR: THEY ARE HELD TOGETHER BY WEAK HYDROGEN BONDS)Helicase: I am a bitch and I will ruin your relationship(AUTHOR: WHICH ARE SEVERED BY DNA HELICASE)Alt-Text: Plenty more Thymine left in the sea

Nude pics of Raven would be considered child pornography. It is obvious she is in the throes of her budding and downy Nabokovian peripubescence.

Nude pics of Rob, though not technically child pornography, would certainly be afflictive and heartbreaking. It is obvious he is in the non-depilatory throes of his outré-hirsute Boullean postpubescence.

I like the newest xkcd actually. Sure, there might be all these hypocritical things behind it we can pick on Randall for in armchair psychology hour, but I think it does come off as humorously self-deprecating.

That's all the praise Randall can get from me today, though. Check out this one from the forums:

"Title text sets Randall into the top league of quotable personalities."

So today, I was sitting on a particularly uncomfortable stool playing guitar. About 10 seconds after I stood up my cock went numb, like completely numb. I had to rub it for about 2 minutes before the feeling came back.

CONCERNING TIME MANAGEMENT: How long Randall spends on comics is debatable, but at least his comic updates without fail M/W/F. It could be a queue thing or whatever, but at least THAT is constant. You KNOW when you get up on Monday that there will be a stupid comic waiting to be ridiculed.

Now Rob, is it too much for us to expect the same from you? Can't you ready a review by T/Th/Sa or at the least W/F/Su?

Say what you will, xkcd did suck, and does, but lately xkcdsucks is sucking worse. Heck, if you like the comic you can say so. Carl would admit it if he couldn't find something wrong (or at least say "hey this one was ok except for..."). Can't you think of ANYTHING for these past two comics?

Rubbish. If he can't do a decent comic three days a week without fail, he needs to find another line of work.

Then again, maybe I'll try that excuse. Maybe next time the foreman chews me out for a wall turning a little wonky I'll just say "but that's only because I insisted on working 50 hours a week without fail!" I'm sure he'll understand.

IshowedUPafterCARLleft...serously, what the heck of a name is this?! I'll call yo Ishy.

So, Ishy, I bet that if you're willing to pay monthly for Rob to post in xkcdsucks as much as Randall makes in a month, he'll gladly write funny and/or rageful reviews of xkcd in time! Heck, if you pay ME to do that, I'll take over this goddamn site in a jiff!

Moral of the story: money, dear boy.

Also, if I were you I'd give up on the waaaamburger and fries. Rob will obviously forget what he was doing with them and eat them before he comes back.

Also, this popped up in my twitter this morning. It's a graph about radiation, and I'm not sure whether it was done about now(i.e., it's hype fishing) or done long ago and unburied due to all the hype surrounding the tragic disaster in Japan.

All I have to say about it now is: what the heck is that about bananas? Why is the scale so spastic?(the same sized square goes from 0.05 to 20, then suddenly 10000 and then 1000000; that's growing 400-fold, then 500-fold and finally 100-fold for no good reason) And did the smaller charts need to be so horribly tacked onto the bigger ones?

Wow. I'm no mathematician, so I had to think about them, but I got every one of those jokes.XKCD is kind of like a cryptic crossword puzzle, if you're not willing to put any thought into them, there's really no point in reading the comics at all. Oh, & the nitpicking about fixing the layout error in the first panel? - Lame as hell; it's bitching about the drawing equivalent of fixing a typo.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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